Tag: Trauma

William Perry & Larry K. Brendtro This story began at Starr Commonwealth, a residential school for troubled youth in Michigan. Larry Brendtro was successor to school’s founder Floyd Starr who was first to express the well-known motto, “There is no such thing as a bad boy.” It was there that Brendtro would meet Bill Perry—co-author[…]

by Mark Freado Fourteen-year-old Angelique sat in the dining room of her group home explaining to her favorite staff member, Ms. G, the fight that happened at school that day. This incident resulted in Angelique’s one-day suspension from school to be imposed the following day, and she was not allowed to attend the group[…]

David R. Cross, Ph.D. One of the campers who attended our summer camp, The Hope Connection, in the early 2000s was a lovely thirteen-year-old who had been adopted from an institution in Eastern Europe. She had been a sexual pet for the workers there and bore the deep emotional scars of chronic maltreatment. During the[…]

One evening, 18-year-old Lars anxiously came to my tent, and without notice, he pulled out a jack knife and held it to my throat. “I want to go home. Get me an airline ticket now, or I’ll cut you and take the money myself.” The event happened on a trip to Spain with a group[…]

Thirteen-year-old Jimmy is a small, intelligent, and emotionally immature student in an alternative school program. He was the reason that I was asked to provide consultation to the staff and administrators in the school. With his constant verbal disruptions, threats to other students, and physical acting out, there were concerns that he may not be[…]

Research Jottings by Larry K. Brendtro, PhD We have become strangers to each other, not only avoiding but even warding off all forms of “unnecessary” physical contact, faceless figures in a crowded landscape, lonely and afraid of intimacy.[1] —Ashley Montagu As a teenager, Jabari risked his life, unaccompanied, to escape war-torn Africa to the United[…]

By the time Josh was four years old, a cascade of loss and powerlessness had already begun. He was removed from his mother’s custody and his home in Moscow, Russia, to an orphanage in the Ukraine. He was later joined there by his two younger sisters. Josh has some memory of his mother, who committed[…]